Loopback

Interface, MTU
TCP/ I P
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Loopback Interface
Most implementations support a loopback interface
It allows a client and server on same machine(host) to communicate
with each other using TCP/IP.
Its name is localhost
Most system assign 127.0.0.1 to this interface
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Conti..
Any datagram sent to loopback interface must not appear on any
network
Everything sent to loopback address appears as IP input
Datagrams sent to a broadcast or a multicast address are copied to the
loopback interface and sent out on the Ethernet.
Anything sent to one of the hosts own IP addresses is sent to the
loopback interface.
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Processing of IP datagrams by loopback interfaces
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MTU
It stands for Maximum Transmission Unit
Characteristic of Link Layer
Most types of network have upper limit.
If IP has a datagram to send ,and the datagram is larger than the link
layers MTU,IP perform fragmentation
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Some MTU values (in bytes)
from RFC 1191
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Path MTU
Select Min value out of two in different networks
The Internet Protocol defines the "Path MTU" of an Internet
transmission path as the smallest MTU of any of the IP hops of the
"path" between a source and destination. Put another way, the path
MTU is the largest packet size that can traverse this path without
suffering fragmentation.
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Path MTU Discovery
a technique for determining the path MTU between two IP hosts
It works by setting the DF (Don't Fragment) option in the IP headers of
outgoing packets. Any device along the path whose MTU is smaller than
the packet will drop such packets and send back an ICMP"Destination
Unreachable (Datagram Too Big)" message containing its MTU.
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Conti
This information allows the source host to reduce its assumed path
MTU appropriately. The process repeats until the MTU becomes small
enough to traverse the entire path without fragmentation.
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